WANTED:

Just about all of the male figures I would ever take advice from are dead. However, like the quote above I still agree with the things they must have believed, or even just said.

Books seem to have lost their luster for true breaks in sad realities, learning and relating to humanity. Seems we have gotten used to more unproductive ways of entertaining our own claustrophobic minds... Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you are, I still have not gotten with the program of the 21st century. I gotta say I still value a good history book in my hands, I still buy the fuckin newspaper even... something my father did every morning, that I swore I'd never follow in his footsteps, it was THE sign of old age...

My pops never knew about Carl Sagan...Not before he noticed my room painted in solid black with glow in the dark stars and moons. He asked if I needed help painting it back to its original Navajo White before my mom got home from a church retreat and saw what I had done to her walls... But he did always reminded us that if we learned how to read, the possibilities in life are literally, endless. Talk about a chipper quote that sounded corny, but to this day has proven true, at least in my little corner of the world. Having kids myself, I think that if there is one great thing they inherited from me, it was the passion for overcoming boredom, but it didn't come easy for them, just like it didn't come easy for me.

The first book I ever read from start to finish was "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (about a journey through time and space). It was the longest, most horrifying experience of my life after I realized I could sit in a chair for hours on end in a juvenile hall at 13 yrs old contemplating "...Billions upon billions of stars". Recreation time had been wrapping up and everybody had been sent back to their holding cell for the night. I remember the cold and loud atmosphere, and thinking to myself... "If only that book had found me three weeks ago - I wouldn't be here locked up like a fuckin animal." Speaking of juvenile and books, if there was one reason I liked my probation officer, it would be two reasons instead. One, she was the hottest thing the county ever hired to set a juvenile train wreck straight. And two, every day she brought me a new book that she ordered me to read and write a lengthy summary on... a task I later found out my pops had put her up to... But it worked.

However it is that a book can capture idol hands, or silence a mind that naturally works overtime, or become the gatekeeper between the discovery of your imagination and logical thinking, the power of knowing how to read is indestructible... It got me through incarceration. It got me through college. It got me through almost 17 full years of devising and manipulating the boundaries of military intelligence. Indestructible...

The first book I got my daughter hooked on was "Superfudge" by children's author, Judy Blume. I found the free worn out copy in my school's library and judged that book completely by its cover, and brought it with me to her daycare. I had no money at that time, but all that meant to her was we would be spending the afternoon at the park, free games of tag and all the swinging she could handle on a hot afternoon. I sat under a shade tree and as she played on the jungle gym I read out loud with my hands, the book in my other hand. For days, that was the routine until one afternoon I sat there and just watched her and she turned to ask me, "What happened to Superfudge, Dad?" I remember the feeling... Knowing she did not know how to read, but she had already gotten her first taste of the universal escape. The feeling is much like a successful mission, in where all of a sudden you just know everything is going to be OK... Turns out she had not only been listening, she had been following. And to her, Superfudge was a best friend. And so I pulled it out of my backpack and continued reading and on through the summer, broke-ass days at the park or even on the bus going home, I read to her. And I read, and read... And read to her.

There is power in the knowledge of reading, in every capacity of life and understanding. Not just the art of breaking free from the daily grind, but new discoveries and the familiarity of the days we learned how to even write. My father used to also tell us, "If you know how to write, you will never bow to another man... Literacy is the first key to the door of your wisdom, the foundation of your independence.. the things I can't teach you, the ability to write legibly and read proficiently, will."

My father never knew of Carl Sagan... but on an equal plane, he was on to something.

I walked slower today with the kind of thoughts I didn't want falling in the streets, and spun my keys around fingers that still play bomb-trip melodies we both can hear if silence wasn't such a crime.... 1, 2, 4, 3, 1... cracks in the street; an identical trait of thoughtwalkers.

I continued at the pace of a slower ballad about a tangled string of lights that hang from corner to corner...zig-zagged across the wide open corridoor where if the walls could speak they would repeat the symphony of another life... my skies were clear but her rain was falling. With each turn above the concrete I carry my regards for a past I haven't yet recalled. But it burns inside the pavement, where hell once tried swallowing me whole. I wait for the water to turn hot and watch for the symbol of her name that flashes across the palm of my hand before I disappear in the foggy mirror. I didn't know how wisdom has been gradually writing itself on a revolving door made of Her script...

One day the lights burned out, and the words bled out in the moment that my closure then served as another's grave. Whether letting go was easy, or whether it set me free I don't care anymore,
I was never a fucking throw away.

May it all rest in peace... as it is here that lies the Dead, where the dead tried to bury me.

These days...
There is no silence to corner my thoughts, or to divide one lifetime from another....
There is, instead, one sun, a moon, one soul and i do proclaim, i've lived and died a thousand times.
and my intentions to outlive do not go to waste, no matter the weather inside my heart, when it is dead to the world, when it is dead to me...
i see, i aim, call on the phantom madness of his own despair... and pull the fuckin trigger every time.

These days....
I take pictures of the sun
Play the soundscape of its echoes as it descends from my eyes
And the moon rises all mansions of the dead, where the night is my enemy and the Earth is my bed.
A life so changed by all turns of time, i'm reminded that a home is only a frame of mind

These days.....
Paradise is so far from this world, as u take from me,
What belongs to all of us, that this is what i bet; Heaven is somewhere, it is not here.
and the broken hearts, this broken soul.... i pick up these pieces but don't know where they go.
When the sun rises, takes with it, my will to un-think the night... not so much ur tv entertainment that wakes me up from a seldom dead sleep, its the reality that u will never grasp.

These days.....
I move on like a rainy day, forget to say what i meant to say
i walk alone, i walk away, look back to my death just waiting there,
and fuck.. i said i would, but i don't care...... what's one more line in the sand?

These days....
I run to get even, to the rythmn of a higher law,
That's one thing my target understands....
neither life nor death matters, only salvation. and I don't deny it, the hymn of my life is but
just one more wild ride, driven by a wild blood, hardened by a wild side, embraced by a wild Love.....

These days....
I spin my nights to shadow ur days, this empire is one of a million ways
to see me from all angles of ur burning sun... what i give, u take... what u bend, i break.
My hands say more than they once did before.... hold a smoke, as i dream away, one Letter at a time, one hit... one more time.... fuckyes. these days im doin.

- i never had a bucket list. but i do got a things to do list from 2007 that i haven't touched since i wrote it.

- im generally a cheery fucker.

- i was recently enlightened to the idea that i get what i vibrate. i can only understand it when i look at it like karma's crazy cousin. the bi-polar one.

- sham-wow was my idea. i just can't prove it.

- i believe in angels. i know there's a god. and i am respectful of everybody who disagrees until they try and change my mind.

- i don't mean to brag, but i've survived about five raptures.

ABOUT THE PAST:

- im not too proud to say that there are things i would go back and do over.

- ok. yea. i was that kid who got his head stuck between two wrought iron bars at the mall.

- i once owned Castle Grayskull.

- when i was single i was notorious for the drunk dial.

SELF-DISCOVERIES:

- i tend to want to share anything i have. i believe this might come from having to split everything in twos when i was growing up.

- i go very quiet for some reason when a pretty woman touches my hands.

- if it lights up then there's no hope for me. i will take it apart.

- i'm aware that i swear too much. but the world would go silent if i ever tried to stop.

- im getting used to people noticing my trachea scar and asking about it. but hey, i hear scars are the new tattoos...

- sometimes i think too much, so it go without saying that the sky is the limit when it comes to sexual fantasies.

- despite the invisible walls around me that seem to intimidate people my age, some shit don't change. im a fuckin kid magnet.

- im a habitual flirt. sorry if i ever took a stab at u.

ABOUT FRIENDS:

- if you have ever told me off and u are reading this, i think ur special or u just know way too much to just cut loose like a fuckin wild horse.

- i'm the kind of head that will brighten ur day even if i can't brighten my own.

- it doesn't matter who u are. don't matter if its innocent. if u say words like head, hairy, squirt, hole and glory, i will laugh until it hurts.

- if u tell me u love me when im angry i will usually fight back.

- 99% of the time i do care. even when i pretend not to.

- i'm just not one of those that settles for a weak character. therefore i got my share of haters and i got those i don't get along with, on and offline.

ABOUT FOOD:

- if i got cookies around i will skip a full course meal and go for the cookie instead.

- i randomly become lactose intolerant. still havent figured out exactly why it strikes and no i dont want to know.

- if it starts with a 't' and ends in a 'les' or 'ines' fuck that. i wont eat it. i'll take a cookie.

- i dont think i will ever eat that egg and tomato sandwich that rita made me on tuesday. why is it still sitting in my fridge? i got hard time letting go of shit these days. or i'll get around to it eventually.

- Cinnamon Toast Crunch once held a special place in my heart until i puked it for two straight days. i think the milk was bad.

CONFESSIONS:

- i am my own worst enemy sometimes.

- i've been accused of being oversexed. i'm guilty.

- i'm territorial. not jealous. territorial.

- its not as hard for me to see life for what it is these days...

- 99% of the time when i hear the word 'no', i take it as a sign for 'try again tomorrow'.

it seems like forever and a day since you gave me a real chance to talk to you. Although time keeps passing, there really isn't a minute that goes by that i don't think about you, at least wonder how you are feeling, and
where life is taking you.

Don't think that since we never cross paths anymore that I don't ask myself how much or just how little I must have meant to you. But knowing me, better than I will ever know you, the pain i feel now will someday subside, and I will hope yours does too.

The point of true friendship is rarely achieved in this world anymore. I am a marine, I see the differene all the time. Perhaps it is because, in this day of the disposable age, we so often forget that the ones we honor by calling friend should always, wherever and whenever possible,
remain indispensible...

I tried to warn you I was far from the visions you believed, of the "perfect" me. But you treated me as though it never mattered, and I grew to trust and love you as though it did. Maybe the novelty wore off, and with it,
your patience. Maybe...

Personally, I think your life just got a hell of a lot better almost instantly, and therefore my timing for human error, fatal.
But no spot-on shot in the dark can really answer the one question I will always have; if you truly loved me, when was there ever a good time to throw me away?

Nonetheless. I have faith that you had your reasons for leaving me behind. And i just would like to say that it doesn't mean
I ever left you.

And as you move forward, I do hope that you will care enough to know
I think of you. And in all of your success, I do hope it will be plain to see that I prayed for you.

i hold onto the simple things in life. i rarely fear the empty spaces inside my heart so long as i don't take for granted the peace and quiet of the shallow contentment. and while all move about; above me, underneath.. i observe more than my eyes can see alone. and watch as those who already know go on, as those who still question, find answers. and amongst my own angels and demons i roam to find my own. and feel ur eyes watching me.

my instincts take all leads. and i hold my silence against the thoughtless whispers of the outspoken kind. understanding is but a casual encounter for u, but for the cheap thrill of every indifferent bargain, i stand up to speak alone. since the day i was born. i lead. u follow.

i make my message plain. in no particular order im everything u see, and according to the trust i hold in u, u may stand part witness to a broken man half saved and half doomed. yes, in the grand city of restoring wayward ways my heart is still a sidewalk. that constant work in progress completely visible to all who pass me by. but never left to be conquered by any lesser than the common denominator between u and i; yes half saved and half doomed. so the believer in me may only reflect as much light as the believer in u. characterized by my shit-eatin grin, holding on easy, but slowly letting go...